Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/47

 ii s. XL JAN. 9, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

37

for a recent volume, it does not seem likely that it represents any Catesby : a Catesby portrait painted fifty years after the Catesbies had left Ashby St. Ledgers would not be likely to go there. It is much more likely that it represents some member of the family that was then in possession of the place.

S. H. A. H.

DICKENS AND WOODEN LEGS (11 S. x. 409, 454, 493), The influence exercised over Dickens by the subject of wooden legs is well marked in several of his writings ; but surely the most striking and unmis- takable example, and one which I have not yet seen mentioned, is that in which Mr. Pecksniff, when he is drunk, requests Mrs. Todgers to draw an architectural design of a wooden leg. Other references to wooden-legged people might have been mere coincidences, but this one distinctly shows the dominant character of the idea in Dickens's mind. J. FOSTER PALMER.

"WALLOONS" (11 S. x. 507). The word comes from a common Teutonic word meaning " foreign," or pure German Welsch, Dutch Waalsch, and English Welsh, and is applied to a people inhabiting the Belgian provinces of Hainaut, Namur, Liege, and parts of Luxemburg and Southern Brabant. The Walloons are descended from the ancient. Gallic Belgse, with an admixture of Boman elements. Their dialect is a distinct branch of the Bomance languages, with some ad- mixture of Flemish and Low German.

ALFRED GWYTHER.

PETER HENHAM (11 S. x. 349). The follow- ing brief notice, if unknown to your querist, may, perhaps, be of help :

" Petrus Henhamus : Monachus Anglus Valli- denensis, res Anglicas a tempore Hengisti Saxonis, sive a medio seculo post Christum natum quinto, usque ad Annum 1244 scripsit tarn bona fide quam qui unquam optima, judice Lelando c. 233. quern sequuntur Baleus, III. 83, et Pitseus, p. 297." J. A. Fabricius, ' Bibliotheca Latina mediee et infimse aetatis,' 1858, torn. iii. p. 192.

EDWARD BENSLY.

LADY ANA DE OSORIO, COUNTESS OF CHINCHON AND VICE-QUEEN OF PERU (11 S. x. 507). La Condesa del Cinchon was the wife of the Spanish Viceroy at Peru. The Peruvian bark called after her was also known at that time as " Jesuit's powder " and " Poudre de Lugo," from the interest Cardinal de Lugo and the Jesuits took in its distribution. On its first introduction into Europe it was reprobated by many eminent physicians ; hence, when it was given to King

Charles II. for his attack of ague, it caused great distrust in the minds of many bigoted persons.

In ' The New Pharmacopoeia of the Boyal College of Physicians,' published in February, 1788, Peruvian bark appears as Cinchona officinalis. In France the plant was called Cinchona, and the substance Cinchonine. CONSTANCE BUSSELL.

Swallowfield Park, Reading.

[A. V. D. P. informs us that no portrait of Ana de Osorio is included in the works mentioned in his reply on ' De Tassis,' ante, p. 36.]

A PURITAN ORDEAL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (11 S. x. 467). See also 8 S. iii. 134, s.v. ' Folk-lore,' and Hone's ' Year Book ' (29 Feb.).

Some forty years ago I witnessed an amateur trial by divination with the Bible and key. The result was unsatisfactory, so far as I can remember.

I believe this superstition still lingers on in some parts of England and also on the Continent. In 1913 a case came before the Berlin penal courts in which it figured conspicuously. An account of the proceed- ings appeared in The Daily Mail of 2 Feb., 1913, from which I extract the following paragraph describing the msthod of pro- cedure :

" Gebhardt has an old leather-bound Bible which she declares is enchanted. When a crime is committed in the village she takes the Bible in one hand, and puts a huge ancient key between the leaves, holding the ring end of the key in the other hand. She repeats an appropriate text, and then asks : ' Dear Bible, say who is the guilty person,' meanwhile herself reciting the names of possible offenders. When the right name is uttered the Bible springs out of her hand and falls to the floor."

JOHN T. PAGE.

AMPHILLIS WASHINGTON (11 S. x. 488). In an article on * The English Ancestry of Washington ' (Harper's Magazine, May, 1891), the late Dr. Moncure D. Conway wrote as follows :

" At Middle Claydon resided another friend of the Washingtons, Sir Edmund Verney, who had a farm servant, or bailiff, named John Boades, to whom he was much attached. This bailiff had a daughter named Amphillis, who became the wife of the Bev. Lawrence Washington, M.A., and the great-great-grandmother of the first President of the United States."

In the pedigree chart attached to Mr. Henry F. Waters's ' Examination of the English Pedigree of George Washington ' (1889) the Christian name of the father of Amphillis Washington is left blank. See also 10 S. iv. 286 ; x. 323.

JOHN T. PAGE.